How to understand the mindset of the buyer_ Saurabh Madan, GM Sales APAC, MoEngage b2b Binge

Saurabh Madan oversees Moengage's go-to-market and customer success initiatives in South East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Based out of Singapore, Saurabh has had over 15 years of experience in Sales & Business Development. He is a writer, tech enthusiast, writer, and sales coach.

At the B2B binge APAC edition, he spoke about one of the most significant challenges marketing and sales folks across the globe face – the mindset of the buyer. Companies have been trying to unravel the secrets of understanding the buyer mindset always. Many companies have tried various methods to do it and have succeeded relatively. However, the process isn't homogenous yet. It may work for one but may not work for another. So the experimentation has to go on.

Understanding of the customer starts with the discovery and backward to selling. Find there is a need or problem that requires solving. Find it and talk about then devise a sales pitch that works for them. Directly jumping into a sales pitch is not justified for both the parties. You don't know what they want, and the customers are being taken for granted. A salesperson should never do that in his right frame of the mind.

Therefore, there has to be the right modus operandi of communication between the two. Discover more data points about the customer better. You are off understanding them. You have to realize that everyone is buying. Everyone in your funnel is buying.

B2C and B2B buy very differently, and the way you discover the mindset is also quite different. For a B2C, there is plenty of data in the form of Data-lakes and massive databases that can be tabled and presented in the form of graphs and charts to help you understand your enormous number of customers you are targeting. Organizations employ large data engine to gain this inference.

But for a B2B, the idea is entirely different. Each one of them has a unique need and cannot be generalized to an enormous mass of customers. The more conversations you make, the better you understand your customers. You cannot generalize your product, but you can make slight customizations to suit your customers. To make those customizations, you have to understand the customers deeply. It needs many conversations. With LinkedIn, you can cluster many similar profiles, but it won't help you group based on the mindset. In a discovery call, try to understand the below few things:

1. What are you solving?
   
2. What are your customers' issues?
   
3. What is the problem they have identified and able to solve?
   
4. What are the problems they have identified and not able to solve?
   
5. Of all the problems they face and trying to solve, can you do better at solving the problems?
   
6. How will you impact them in terms of sales, revenues, KPIs, and other forms of impact?
   

Build your reputation with your customers so that they open up to you. To build a personal rapport, you have to be genuine and find that commonality between you and your client. Then make the relationship on the commonality. Unravel the mystery behind their needs and problems by continually talking to them and understanding them.